A message to my fellow progressives
Jun. 9th, 2016 12:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerWith Clinton sewing up the Democratic nomination, I understand that a great many people are feeling disappointed by the results of primary season, and discouraged by the prospect of the upcoming general election. You don’t want to vote for the racist, sexist egomaniac, but you don’t like the idea of voting for Clinton, either: she’s too corporatist, too much of a hawk, too much or too little of whatever you’re most focused on. And so you’re thinking that come November, maybe you’ll write in Bernie’s name or vote Green or just not show up to vote at all. As a protest against the corruption, the two-party system, the rightward swing of our country.
To those people, I say this: look at the rest of the ballot.
Not the rest of the presidential ballot. The rest of the ballot. Governor. Senator. Representative. State legislators. Heck, go past those down into the real nitty-gritty: mayors, city councilmembers, school board, local measures, whatever your particular voting district lets you register an opinion on.
That is where your protest can mean something.
At that level of the ballot, you can damn well bet that every single vote can make a difference. Maybe your state is guaranteed to go blue or red in the electoral college, but your town? That’s easier to swing. And if you swing the town in the direction you want, it gets easier to swing the county, and the state, and the nation.
Sure, it’s a pain in the neck to pay attention to all of those races. Lots of them don’t even have official party affiliations, so you can’t just look for the right letter; you have to spend some time googling endorsements and policy statements. Voting responsibly at the local level requires preparation. But not much: even just an hour online the night before the election can give you a decent sense of the lay of the land. And then you’ve made the area around you just a little bit more like the world you want to live in.
Because for fuck’s sake, if we sit around expecting to make change happen once every four years, it’s never going to happen. We need change at the local level. We need city governments that prioritize making our lives better on a daily basis. We need ordinances that protect people’s health and safety. We need fields in which to grow new candidates, creating the governors and senators and presidents of the next few decades. So find the people you want, find the fire-breathing socialist radical of your dreams or the economic visionary with the ideas that can save us all that’s running for county commissioner, and vote for them. (Hell, maybe even sign up for their campaigns. But I haven’t gotten that far myself, so I’m trying to just preach what I practice, here.)
Then, when you’ve done that, take a look at the top of the ballot again.
Ask yourself: of the options there, which has the best chance of supporting all those downticket people in their work?
(And remember, this is not the Hugos. We can’t vote No Award, can’t say we’d rather have no president at all than one of the candidates on offer. We’ll have a president. And it’s going to be one of two people.)
When you vote, it’s not about you or your preferred candidate. It’s about the rest of the country, its government and its citizens, the extent to which they’re going to work together or against each other. It’s about the Supreme Court justices that candidate will nominate, who will decide the cases that will improve or wreck lives. It’s about those lives they’ll improve or wreck, all the people who can’t afford to say “well, maybe four years of Trump would be the wake-up call this country needs” — because they’re already awake, and they’re the eggs that would get broken for your self-righteous omelette.
You say you want a revolution? Vote for one — down at the bottom of the ballot, the roots that tree needs in order to grow.
(Personally, I’m fine with Clinton, and am happy to vote for her in November. If you feel differently, I won’t argue with you; but I’m not particularly interested in dissecting her character, voting record, or other qualities in the comments.)
Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.
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no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 02:36 am (UTC)> if we sit around expecting to make change happen once every four years, it’s never going to happen. We need change at the local level.
Movement conservatism understands this, and spent decades running and voting for school boards on up. Which is why they control a majority of statehouses and both houses of Congress. Heck, the GOP got fewer total votes in one of the recent House elections, but still won the House -- partly because of inherent geography, dense cities and all, but also partly because GOP legislatures had gerrymandered districts and restricted voting access (and rights. Ex-felons denied the vote, combined with racist conviction rates...)
Obama got record turnout in 2008... which collapsed in 2010. Country could be a lot different if we'd kept Congress.
Part of what drove me nuts about the primary was that it kind of doesn't matter. A lot of what both of them were campaigning on, the President has no power to make happen anyway. Senator Sanders has more formal power to raise the minimum wage or expand college funding right now as a Senator than he would as a President, waiting for bills to come to him.
Relatedly, I've gone off "fight in primaries for (more liberal) Democrats in Congress!" Right now what we need is more (liberal Democrats), even if some of them aren't all that liberal. A (more liberal) minority will be just as powerless as today.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 05:03 am (UTC)And yes, the left has not been half so organized as the right in terms of local politics. I'd like to see that change.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 08:07 pm (UTC)I am completely the opposite of you two. My view of the D party this entire voting cycle has been take it back or destroy it. It still is. What we have now is worse than useless. The current D party is to effective action as Fox News historically has been to the free flow of truthful information. By actively working to advance a mostly conservative agenda while pretending to try and advance a progressive one, it is making it harder to go forward than the honestly hateful Republicans. I prefer real enemies to fake friends whose every pleasant utterance is just a means of manuevering for a better angle to stab my back.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 11:27 pm (UTC)Obama's first Congress passed ACA, economic stimulus (including lots of renewable energy and infrastructure stuff), credit card reform, tobacco regulation, student loan reform, the repeal of DADT, the Fair Pay Act, Dodd-Frank (which has done a lot to curb banking excesses), and approved Justices Kagan and Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. This is just from memory, there might well be more.
All that despite unprecedented abuse of the filibuster by Republicans, meaning that what looked like a decent supermajority was often barely adequate to get anything done, especially if Blue Dog Democrats balked. (Most of whom lost their seats after 2010, due to ACA.)
I hardly think that's worthless. Not to mention what state level parties have done: raising state minimum wages, banning conversion therapy, no-prescription birth control, renewable energy support, reining in police, pushing toward automatic voter registration... (for example, a slew of California laws in 2016 (http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-g-california-new-laws-2016-htmlstory.html)).
no subject
Date: 2016-06-10 03:28 am (UTC)An unequivocally good thing. No argument.
"Obama's first Congress passed ACA" -- Not an accomplishment I think you should be touting. The one good part of this act was the Medicaid expansion. Otherwise, it functioned as an enormous income guarantee to insurance companies, by forcing lots of people to buy junk insurance they didn't want and don't or can't use. I'm not going to say no one except Medicaid patients benefited, but on the whole I'd call it a net negative. Even giving this the benefit of the doubt and saying it is, on the whole, somewhat better than what we had before, and giving it a further benefit of the doubt that further improved tweaks are coming, to call it a good thing ignores that Obama came in with a massive landslide, congressional majorities, a public that would have basically forced even a hostile Congress to go along with anything he really wanted (like the common idol of both O and the GOP, Ronnie Reagan, who somehow, was able to get programs he wanted thru Congress without ANY majority) AND a public that desperately wanted healthcare reform. Adding a public option would have required no more energy than what was actually passed and single payer could have been done as well, had the Dems wanted it. They clearly didn't want single payer or a public option because they feared it would lead to a single payer system over time. This was a classic case of pretending to do something good while doing as little as possible to help the public and as much as possible to benefit large and pretty much counterproductive health insurance corporations. It wasted a ton of progressive energy on propping up a bad system while forestalling worthwhile change indefinitely. It's "success" has served to help discredit government programs not only in the mind of those already inclined to think that way, but of many previously on the fence.
"economic stimulus" -- A woefully inadequate package, predicted to be woefully inadequate, and which subsequent years have proven a long-term failure. Not only not enough, but also horribly directed. Rs & Libertarians now use this to argue against any stimulus. Not a good thing. Unless you think all the Dems voting for Bernie and all the Republicans for Trump and the Independents who flocked to one or the other, not to mention those people who have given up on the system and all promises by anyone, are rejecting the preferred candidates of the two party establishment because they are really, really HAPPY with their economic lot in life. We had a recovery that wasn't, and gave lots of people who used to have good jobs and lost them NEW jobs. New jobs, which, alas, tended to be kinda sucky and awful relative to the old ones.
"including lots of renewable energy" What we've done so far towards a sustainable planet is like putting a band-aid on someone who just had their leg cut off and claiming you did something useful. Hell, half the time we've claimed we're doing something and then not done it. Just no. Oh wait! Republicans are mean, and when they get all riled up about something, Democrats can do nothing but cower so it's not really their fault. I forget.
"and infrastructure stuff) " Look around at the infrastructure of this country. If you want to say it's gotten better go ahead.
"credit card reform"-- Wow. I think they limited rates to 30% or something. Yes, this is an important piece of legislation that shall remembered and celebrated over the decades for the meaningful difference it has made in people's lives!!!
tobacco regulation-- Again, this important, vital piece of legislation has made an important difference in the lives of .... ... someone. Or someones. Somewhere. Maybe. Yet again with the giant show accomplishing litte, targeting one scapegoat because nobody likes the tobacco industry and it didn't affect their overseas profits anyway ...
student loan reform -- ... ... The group of people most affected by THIS triumph of legislation are the people who least value it and most hate the current political establishment of BOTH parties.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-10 03:28 am (UTC)the Fair Pay Act -- which amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act to state that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal pay lawsuit resets with each new paycheck instead of the date whereupon pay was initially agreed. And has failed to close the pay gap between men & women because people still have to know they are being discriminated against before they can file a claim, while the corollary act requiring companies to disclose pay rates never got passed somehow, making this more of a symbolic than real victory, for the purposes of all but a very few. Also, this was done in the first days of the administration. Despite all I've just said, it's one of the better bills of the last 7 years. But zero follow-up to make it more than a symbol.
Dodd-Frank (which has done a lot to curb banking excesses) -- Ha-ha!!! A PERFECT example of our Democrats now. This was never particularly useful, but since passed it has been watered down into almost-meaninglessness. But yay enforcement under Ds! In the case of highly publicizesd violations with a massive outcry, investigations have been launched, whistleblowers lives have been ruined, the rich fucks doing the violating are still very free and very wealthy. Maybe one or two people waaaaay down the the totem pole get something slightly more than a slap on the wrist. Cheerleaders for Team D praise this as something worthwhile, ignoring that nothing has changed, and the prosecutors who fail to successfully prosecute anyone other than a sacrifical scapegoat (and only if there is a firestorm of publicity) then go to work for the same rich fucks, and cheerleaders for Team D Don't care. This is why people who aren't wholly committed to the D branding are leaving the party and switching to Indy in droves. Your happy party leaders accomplish things which aren't accomplishments.
"approved Justices Kagan and Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. "
Hey, if you get really lucky, you can applaud someone for Garland in the near future.
Okay, that's not fair. Improving the gender balance and diversity of the court was good. At least they are socially liberal corporatists. But other than the diversity and basic legal competence and not being actively evil, there's not that much to say. Yay Team Blandness, at least they're not Alito & Scalia?
"All that despite unprecedented abuse of the filibuster by Republicans, meaning that what looked like a decent supermajority was often barely adequate to get anything done"
Again, arguments like this are why people are abandoning Dems in droves. There was not a huge amount of filibustering, more like "OMG, they might filibuster, sorry guys this won't work come up with something worse." Also, let's say you are right. The Ds are absolutely helpless without a filibuster proof majority that includes no blue dogs. Okay, they are helpless. Why are they helpless but Rs can ram stuff through when it's 50/50 and Cheney would be the tie-breaker? Think about this a bit.
"I hardly think that's worthless."
We could not disagree more.
"Not to mention what state level parties have done"
Okay, here, again, I agree with you guys. People should pay attention to state races. Congresscritters in state races tend to be more responsive to the will of their constituents, for both better and worse. but you still need decent people to vote for.
(for example, a slew of California laws in 2016)-- I live here. Yes, we're better than some places, but that's due to the makeup of the state's voters. For responsiveness when it comes to what really matters, see our DEMOCRATIC gvnr Jerry Brown, and fracking, and methane. Among other things. Money vs Planetary Survival? Yay money. You can vote for him. I won't.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 05:54 pm (UTC)Pt1, sorry for length
Date: 2016-06-09 07:56 pm (UTC)I would say the conservadems and fauxgressives make up about 80-85% of our current Democratic party. Which has now become what Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report calls "the more effective evil" (to counter what he--and I--think is the completely false and kinda idiotic lesser evil narrative; that works sometimes in some situations, but if the lesser evil of now is at best the same as and arguably worse than the greater evil who could not be tolerated of 40 yrs ago, what does that say about where consistent lesser evil voting gets you?)(this is not just HRC v Nixon on that comparison; take a look at who the DNC is endorsing in the Dem primary across the board, and what this has done to the economic situation of millions, and where the all talk but reverse action on the environment has gotten us, the complete refusal of Dems in general to even attempt major changes when they control any given branch, their so obvious I will call you a liaur if you say you don't notice it contempt towards progressives and their outright fury when anyone challenges neoliberal consensus, etc).
Also, keep in mind the possibility (I would say the absolute & screamingly obvious certainty) that people didn't turn out in 2010 or 2012 because Obama didn't do shit for them. People voted for him because they like who they think he is & because they want to support the nation's first black president.
But his policies and the policies of the Democrats are NOT making things better. They keep getting worse for the vast majority. So why should anyone turn out to vogte for people we know are screwing us over to enrich their bank accts and feed their personal power trips? They should feel very very lucky the masses are thus far choosing to complain or tune out as opposed to coming for their heads. They haven't earned anyone's vote; most of them have actually earned nothing but a karmic balance that would see them spending their next life drowning in a vat of toxic sludge while jeering onlookers throw darts at them, if you believe in that sort of thing.
The Dems keep recruiting former Republicans and pushing them over actual progressives, really really hard. (check out the blog Down With Tyranny for extensive coverage of the many, many races across the country where this has been happening). The policies of the Democrats are basically just more competent versions of the same policies Bush was already doing. Democratic politicians, in general, are better (and less crazy) in their rhetoric than Republicans, and almost uniformly more competent administrators, and less likely to quote Ayn Rand at you, but for the vast, vast majority of the country and eventually for everyone and everything on this world, they're just more competently steering the car off the cliff. For economics, it's choosing between lethal injection from a smiling face telling you they're your friend u feel all better and this is gonna make yo(D) and getting pounded to death with a sledgehammer while being assured you can make your bones heal at any time if you just try hard enough (R). So, really, if you think that's your choice, why the hell should you bother voting for either?
Re: Pt1, sorry for length
Date: 2016-06-09 11:29 pm (UTC)"all talk but reverse action on the environment has gotten us, the complete refusal of Dems in general to even attempt major changes when they control any given branch"
Obama tried to regulate carbon emissions and especially coal with EPA regulations. I'm not sure of the status of that, I think (Republican-dominated) courts objected. That's on top of renewable subsidies from both Congress and Democratic state legislatures.
"The Dems keep recruiting former Republicans"
Like Elizabeth Warren, Republican until 1995?
Re: Pt1, sorry for length
Date: 2016-06-10 03:42 am (UTC)Re: Dems recruiting former Rs & Liz Warren-- three points--
1. Please don't confuse people like Patrick Murphy with Liz Warren. Also, they didn't recruit her. She switched on her own, decided to run on her own. Also, there's a genuine difference between people who switch because of beliefs (hell, I was for Reagan in 84 and hoping for a Gore/Jackson or Jackson/Gore ticket in 88, people change) and people who switch w/out changing beliefs. Read up on Murphy. If you like him, or even find him tolerable, let me know, and we can cease any attempt at dialog.
2. Supposedly most of the more establishment Dems don't particularly like her and just put up with her because she's super popular and they have to. They recruited Murphy (and similar others, he's just the 1st/worst that immediately sprang to mind) and are running him against a real progressive in Alan Grayson, who the DNC is colluding with the MSM to try and destroy. But thanks for making my point. They barely tolerate Warren (tho now they are kissing her ass in an effort to placate progressives) but are pushing Murphy hard and trying to kill Grayson. Think what this says about them.
3. If you're trying to appeal to disenchanted progressives right now, I'm not sure Warren is really the best way to go. Granted, you don't have many or any good ways, but we've haven't had the same respect for her since the Mass primary.
Pt2, sorry again for length
Date: 2016-06-09 07:57 pm (UTC)Basically, we need a downballot with meaningful choices, and some sort of trust that these ballots will be accurately counted (which, after this Dem primary, I no longer do; at all; I will never again entirely trust any election that isn't 100% hand counted paper ballots with observers monitoring every step of the way; and never trust any results at all which lack those steps if the pro-oligarchy, pro-rich sociopath candidate wins) for what you've said here to work for me or most of us who are of the temperament that I think you are trying to appeal to with this post.
I don't mean to be insulting to you here, I follow your journal and I basically like and respect you, but it's practically impossible for me to say anything non-insulting to anyone who thinks Clinton won the primary fairly, or, alternatively, that it doesn't matter if she won the primary only via massive disenfranchisement and having the entire corporate media function as a propaganda arm for her for a certainty (if you think both of those are not both 100% certain and glaringly obvious and impossible to deny, I literally cannot have a conversation with you, there is no point), combined with outright elect fraud at a very high probability.
Putting it in a nutshell, I think those people who are trying to defend the current system such as it is or suggesting it only needs small tweaks and it's basically working fine, are as much my enemy and the enemy of every living thing on earth as the global warming deniers. Even those of you who mean well. Continuing with business as usual is going to mean the end of modern civilization and massive extinction beyond what we've seen so far at the very least (the massive extinction is already baked in with what we've already done, but there is still a chance to mitigate the damage if we take major steps immediately, small steps or, worse, pretending to take big steps while taking tiny ones is no better than going full bore denialist), and quite possibly the end of most life as we know it. In the shorter and less scary but still really horrific run, and ignoring the environmental damage which most Americans still seem unable or unwilling to comprehend or care about, as long as we continue with the current neolibera/neoconservative (is there even a difference anymore beyond rhetoric on social issues, which is probably there only to keep people more focused on tribal fighting over these issues than because the pols in question actually think different) economic program espoused by most of the candidates in both parties, most humans are still going to be working harder and harder for worse and worse living standards, less and less control over how they do their jobs, with fewer able to work at all.
In that context, if the candidates in question aren't doing anything about the basic structural problems, and seem to be just fine with all this, we should vote for any/not hate nearly all because why? (that's leaving aside my personal view that anyone and everyone who votes for HRC from this point on is voting to endorse election fraud and for completely ending the democratic process except as a sham spectacle--and that is NOT a knock at her character, there, it's a statement of fact. She could be St Hillary and voting for her is still voting to continue rigging elections on behalf of whoever the DNC would rather get the nom, whether that is your intent with your vote or not)
Understood in advance that this comment may be unwelcome and it's perfectly fine if you want to tell me to leave your comment threads. I really was being as polite as I could and trying as hard as I could to stay as close as possible to what I thought would be not entirely unwelcome. This was the best I could manage. (edited to fix lack of prefix)
Re: Pt2, sorry again for length
Date: 2016-06-09 11:38 pm (UTC)I think there's always been a difference; they're mostly about different things. Neoliberalism harked back to pre-New Deal and international definitions of liberalism: free trade, small government, balanced budgets. Neoconservatism was about an aggressively interventionist foreign policy, especially in the name of democracy. One person could be one or the other or both or neither.
Bill Clinton might arguably have been neoliberal; Hillary, who supported universal health care, voted against CAFTA, has is talking about a higher and inflation-indexed minimum wage, is definitely. She's arguably neoconservative, is certainly more interventionist, though less for "spreading democracy" and more about stopping mass killings -- she's inspired by success in Yugoslavia and the failure to stop the Rwandan genocide.
"massive disenfranchisement"
The most disenfranchising thing in these primaries were caucuses, which require hours of investment, have teensy turnout, AIUI usually don't have secret ballot, and are often part of complicated multi-level delegate systems that obscure the final result. (See Nevada.)
Re: Pt2, sorry again for length
Date: 2016-06-10 04:10 am (UTC)Gratzi for the explanation on neocon/neolib. Okay, over 90% overlap on the people, thus my confusion. but clearly different things.
Your 2d paragraph--c'mon. Please. Yes, I'm one of the minority on the left who agree with you that what Bill did in Yugoslavia was a clear and unequivocably good thing, but the rest of that? Yes, in foreign policy, she's been all about stopping the mass killings.
Caucuses vs. Primaries -- I 100% agree w/you in principle. But that's assuming a non-rigged primary. You can do shady stuff in caucuses, but not on the same scale, and even on smaller scale it's a lot more obvious, so at least people know what happened. Thus, the HRC/DNC crowd only cheated a little around the edges (worst in NV, at stage 1 and 3, you wanna try claiming people were throwing chairs? and in WY) when they cheated at all. Caucuses, you can't switch a third of the votes or make a huge chunk of them disappear.
As I've said on twitter, after the Cali fiasco I'll never fully trust our elections again until everyone in power is purged, or we have 100% handcounted paper ballots with multiple observers every step of the way from delivery until final count. And if anyone saying this primary wasn't rigged EVER tries to complain about Republican election fraud or disenfranchisement efforts, I'm going to laugh my ass off at you.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-09 09:17 pm (UTC)Don't ignore your local elections and offices. Trickle up politics does work - that's how the conservatives started maneuvering for power decades ago. Yes it is slow, and not flashy or glamorous, but it is important. It takes time to run for local office, and it is work to be in local office (often unpaid). but it is important. And it is important to support those who run and occupy those offices.
From personal experience I know how discouraging it is to spend a lot of time and energy as a local board member and when asking for support on an important issue to be told -sorry, to busy, but you're doing a good job. Well part of my job was to listen to those who actually showed up at public hearings, or who took a little time to write a letter to be read into the minutes. I reached the point that when my only support was voiced by someone I ran into the supermarket, and no one would even send a note in support of positions that they said they felt were important, that I realised that perhaps those issues were not of such local value after all. And my family needed me too.
To those who are discouraged by their local choices - maybe you should step up and actively support someone who reflects your values, even if you don't run for local office yourselves.
Those who only grumble are a large part of the problem.